Thursday, 25 June 2015

Seven Genetic Mutations

Wherever Norns are, genetic mutations are sure to be too. And while you can already find a list of each Norn's genetic mutations on their pages - which you can get to from the 'Norns' link under the header - I thought it would be good to highlight some of the more interesting ones in a post. In total there are fourteen mutations, which is far too many to go through without making everyone bored, so I've selected the seven which I think are the most intriguing.

Before I continue, I'd like to say that that the downloads for the Norns that are not genetically modified or descended from genetically modified Norns are now fully functioning! Each zip file comes with the Norn's genome, the exported Norn (if the Norn is still alive), and a text file with information about the Norn, its genetics, and its appearance genes.

The mutation has switched on WTA (winner takes all) in this gene, which is for the concept lobe. WTA means that only the neuron with the highest state value will fire. I'm not exactly sure (I never am) about what this does, but I'm fairly certain that normally many different neurons in the concept lobe can feed through to the decision lobe at once, thus allowing for cases where more than one concept can
affect decisions (eg. the Norn is hungry and food is nearby but the Norn also has high sex drive and there's a pretty lady nearby) but with this mutation only the cell with the highest state value will fire, meaning only one concept can affect decisions at any given time. I think.

These next two mutations are from Fandom:

Original gene:

111 Emb B DupMut 1*Reward => 1*Reinforcement + 1*RewardEcho

Mutated gene:

111 Emb B DupMut 1*not_allocated4-- => 1*Reinforcement + 1*RewardEcho

If I'm right, this mutation means that reward doesn't actually contribute to learning because it can no longer turn into reinforcement and reward echo; an unused chemical turns into reinforcement and reward echo instead. This would mean positive reinforcement is utterly useless.

*Correction: After looking into this further I learned that learning doesn't quite work like this. What this gene actually means is that the accumulated reward that has not dispersed (Reward has a half-life of 248, which is about 52 years real time) will constantly reward Fandom for his actions and reinforces everything he does as positive through the decision lobe, but it won't reinforce the actual concepts in the concept lobe because the chemical Reinforcement is not actually created, unless I'm wrong about this again.

This stuff about dendrites and reinforcing through one lobe but not the other is something I can't really explain as I don't fully understand it yet and it's really rather complicated but it's something I'm interested in exploring and one day.

Another thing to note is that Reward Echo isn't actually used in learning at all - it's simply a chemical that doesn't disappear quickly (like reward does - turns into reinforcement) that can be used to better track reward in the science kit. The genetics kit even has this to say about it:

"REWARDECHO / PUNISHECHO are mainly there only to show the existence of reinforcement in a less transient manner, for monitoring tools etc. "

This is the gene responsible for causing coughing; when it detects a certain level of Histamine B, it triggers a cough. The mutation here is that the nominal value is 1, not 0, which means even when Histamine B is not above the threshold the locus will be slightly stimulated. This sometimes results in a cough even when no Histamine B is present.

The change in this gene is that it now has the feature 'inverted', which means that rather than increasing the value the locus will be set to, it will decrease it. I think this means that a high level of Sleepiness will not equate to a high sleepiness drive.

This reaction gene normally turns one boredom and one boredom decrease into reward, therefore decreasing the boredom and rewarding the Norn for decreasing its drive. With this mutation, however, hunger decrease and not boredom decrease reacts with boredom to create reward.

The change here is that the Loss value has changed to 1 instead of 5. I'm afraid this is too far beyond me for me to even make a guess at what it does. You could say I'm at a "Loss" as to how this affects Finch. I shamelessly admit I included this mutation for the sole reason of making an awful, awful pun.

So there you have it. The seven most interesting genetic mutations from my Norns. Remember to check their individual pages for further discussion of their mutations and to see the mutations that aren't mentioned, and if you see any speculation about genes that you think might be wrong please let me know in the comments.